Kicking the wheels on Emergence Basic and giving it a test drive.

[SMartin]

I program strictly as a hobby and recently decided to give Emergence Basic a try.
I have to say, I'm very happy. The learning curve was very shallow for me. Once I figured out how to do a few simple things, open a window, handle messages and such, I was up and running.
I decided a Minesweeper clone would be a fun test project.  About five days of working on it for a few hours after work and it's done.
The executable is tiny, and no doubt fast (not that Minesweeper needs it).

The only things I really felt spoiled about after messing around with .net for a while was that Emergence Basic didn't have enums, and code/region folding in the text editor.
I've already purchased the Aurora beta so I can goof around with some classes and objects. I've been thinking about porting over my .net Breaker Panel Index database.

Anyway, thanks. I think it's an excellent product. The help files and examples really are very helpfull.

I've attached the program if anyone feels the urge to play minesweeper.

Steve Martin

[Junner2003]

Hmmm,

look what people can do if they know what they're doing!
It's a nice clon! Thanks for sharing that!

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

Not to worry, V1.6 will have code folding provided by the Scintilla editor component, just like we have in Aurora.  Enumerations will be in 1.59

Have fun with it

Paul.

[Dennisc]

Not to worry, V1.6 will have code folding provided by the Scintilla editor component, just like we have in Aurora.  Enumerations will be in 1.59

For us poor souls who spent 40 years growing up with FORTRAN, COBOL, AUTOCODER, RPG please explain in simple language

Have sort of an idea but not too sure..... 

Dennis

[John S]

"Code Folding" is strickly referring to a function in the editor.  For example, Aurora uses braces { } to enclose parts of the code in for loops, if segments, etc..  The code within the for loop can be folded (collapsed/hidden) reducing the appearance of the code in the editor window.  In EB, I believe, this would be the folding/collapsing of the code between for/next segments, if/then/else/endif segemts, etc.

Enumerations are a neat way of defining integer constants.   From a past Aurora announcement:

Notes on enum:
---------
The enum keyword creates an enumeration by defining constants in a list and an associated type define.

enum DaysOfWeek {monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday}
DaysOfWeek day = monday;
if(day == tuesday)
{
    // put some code here
}

The name of the enumeration is type defined to integer.  Each list of enumerated values is giving the starting value of 1.  You can override this value and each successive value will be the previous + 1.  For example:

enum msgids
{
    msg_close = 10,
    msg_open,
    msg_save,
    msg_quit,
    msg_edit = 100,
    msg_cut,
    msg_copy
}

msg_open = 11 and msg_cut = 101 in this case.

[Dennisc]

Thanks John

[LarryMc]

Paul said on Jan 19th:

Enumerations will be in 1.59

I can't find them.  What am I doing wrong?

Larry

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

They were pushed back for the paid addition.   Now will be in 1.6

[LarryMc]

Understand. Thanks